THE GREATEST OF FIRE SPECTACLES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2645, 11 September 1906, Page 2

THE GREATEST OF FIRE SPECTACLES.

One of the most terrific spectacles imaginable is a colossal oil fire. When millions of barrels of oil go up in flame it is a sight worth going far to see. The tongues of fire shooting skyward, the great pillars of black smoke tortuously twisting their way through the flames, the roaring tumbling billows of blaze—it is fascinating, stupendous, terrifying. A strange fact is that an oil fire makes no light worth mentioning when beheld close at hand, because of the pall of impenetrable black smoke. Hut at a distance it makes night bright as day. In fact when the Texas Oil Company's twelve tanks down at the Humble oil fields took lire from a flash of lightning they made a mammoth lamp for a pretty big section of the State. At Humble, two miles away the town was as bright as day all night long. At Houston, seventeen miles distant a newspaper could be read without the slightest difficulty while the (ire raged so far away. At Galveston, sixty-five miles to the south, the fire was plainly visible, and at other points, some as far as 100 miles removed, the glare, rose high on the horizon. As a spectacle it was magnificent but it cost close on to 900,000 dollars in oil, machinery and tanks destroved.

QUARTER OF A MILLION BARRELS AFIRE. Where this terrific conflagration took place was a mile away from the oil fields proper. In a plot of 106 acres surrounded by a high barbed wire fence were the twelve tanks or really reservoirs. Each tank had an average capacity of 230,000 barrels of oil, and ten of the tanks on the day of the fire were Idled to trie brim. Two were about half filled with crude oil, so that in all there were about 2,r>00,000 barrels of oil, waiting for a single spark to set the tongues of flame leaping hundreds of feet in the air. Each tank averaged four acres in area and the total surface covered with oil to a depth of from twelve to fourteen feet was 48 acres. It was four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. A sudden thunder storm sprang up—the dread of oil men. One bolt, struck fairly in the middle of the centre tank on the easterly side. A crash, a puff, and roar—in a twinkling four acres of oil were fiercely blazing, the flames twisting furiously higher and higher through the shooting spirals of heavy, black smoke. Tank after tank caught as the hungry flames swept down upon their unprotected surfaces. Soon all twelve were roaring seas of burning oil, with great billows of flames dashing wildly at the containing sides and long fingers of fire hurtling hundreds of feet heavenward.

Of course it was useless to try to quench those flames that hung themselves half a mile into the air. Even had they water it would only have served to feed the fire into faster fury. All the men could do was to throw up earthern embankments to 1 keep the fire from spreading to other tanks outside the burning area. This alone cost twelve men their lives. There were 200 workmen with 75 mules engaged in throwing up earth to stop the spread of the burning oil when an embankment of one of the tanks burst with a tremenoous report releasing a flood of fiery fluid down upon the toiling men and animals. Men and mules were hemmed in by the cataract of oil ; there was a mad rush for safety from certain death. Some men mounted mules and rode wildly off, escaping easily. Others were more fleet than the flames and got away on foot. Twelve men so close to the burning oil that they hadn't time to run away were incinerated. Some forty mules balked when they had a chance to escape and were burned alive.

HEAVY RAIX SPREAD THE FIRE The hard rain made the lire worse. ]t flooded the held and made a fine could spread itself. Thousands of surface on which the burning oil men were called out and worked all night long strengthening the levees, repairing weakened tanks, throwing up barriers of earth. Half a mile away were 4,000,000 barrels of oil more belonging to other companies. It was to save this that everybody worked with the energy of giants all the time in peril of a sudden "'boil over,' which would have shot the burning oil over the protecting embankment and started the other tanks in another and a fiercer blaze. The lire burned three days, or until the last gallon of oil was consumed. The heat from it was terrific. It turned the grass to crackling ash in the twinkling of an eye. Tt burned the few trees that stood near about into bare poles. It dried the earth to powder. It left scores of people homeless. They had lived in shacks and tents within the burned district the better to be able, to attend to their work. One whiff of flame and everything inflammable went up in smoke. The belongings of these unfortunates went in the same way. They had to fare as best they could through the long night, while the rain poured down in torrents and spread the burning oil perilously near millions more barrels of oil waiting only a spark to go up in flames as well.

Fire is the one thing most feared in the oil fields. The tanks still left standing in the Texas fields are equipped with every appliance that can lie suggested to ward off fire. Each tank is supplied with a 40,000 candle-power searchlight worked by electricity supplied from the pumping station's power. Two men continually sweep the surface of the tank with this light all night long, on the look out for anything suspicious. These lights are so powerful that line print may be read by thenaid as far as a mile away even on the darkest nights. The Humble fields are among the historic oil producers of the world. I a st summer when the gushing peri()(i «as on there were wells producing- from 10.000 to 23.000 barrels ol oil a day without a single pound of pressure" being applied to them. It was a forest of derricks, many not a hundred feet apart.

MARVELLOUS YIELD OF TIIK FAMOIS SIMMS. The great Simms well, which was ••brought it. ' "luring the early part of Hit! oil feVer, was the star of the !'„•!,I It started oil with a dail.v How of -J.-,.im)o barrel.-,, which gradually decreased until the How was 17.0<1<> l.anvl .i da.\ . There it remained siat ionur.v lor a b'li.u t inie and then siiddenh turned to salt water. But

in. the .mean time it harl made rich men of its owners. It was one of the biggest producers in the history of the oil'industry. For weeks it poured out a stream of oil six inches in diameter, day and night, forced from the bowels of the earth by the sole pressure of natural gas.—"New York World."